I was down in Sydney a few weeks ago and managed to catch the world premiere of Australian director Bruce Beresford's film, "Mao's Last Dancer." It is a beautiful story, beautifully told, in a film that combines the personal and the epic in an era of traumatic change for China.

The film takes its title and narrative from the autobiography of the renowned ballet dancer, Li Cunxin. His story is one of dogged personal courage and achievement. And yet, the elements that move the reader — and cinemagoer — so profoundly are those that deal with his love of family, his honest loyalty to friends and, despite all, to his country.

Li was born in January 1961 into a poor peasant family in Shandong Province. Mao Zedong's so-called Great Leap Forward had, in reality, been a precipitous plunge into mass disaster, during which his engineered famine caused an estimated 30 million people to perish. The commune on which the Li family worked and lived had only a single public bath for more than 10,000 people, and barely enough food for everyone to survive.